Montana Coffee Traders again!

Mile 4062

We are at Montana Coffee Traders again. This time we are in the town of Columbia Falls. This has become the favorite place to eat breakfast on the trip. They have the best coffee! The waitresses are cute too. They roast their own beans. Not at the restaurant, but a few miles away in Whitefish where they are based. Check them out at www.coffeetraders.com. Anyway, after that little commercial, here's what's happened since the last Montana Coffee Traders we reported from:



We headed up to Glacier National Park. We didn't have any problems getting in through the west entrance. If you remember, we were worried about a reported forest fire in the region. However, we found out when we got there, we were able to go almost all the way through the park and stop five miles short of the east entrance. So, we were able to drive about 45 miles into the park and see most of it. Unfortunately, the plan was to leave on the east and continue on to Great Falls. Instead, we had to turn back and retrace our route back to the west entrance. We did get to see a lot of beautiful scenery though. Never saw "A River Runs Through It" but now it seems like it would be worth a viewing. Even got to see a bunch of mountain goats. We also reached the northernmost point of the trip at mile 3921 at the Loop Lookout. For the geography geeks, that was at N 48.755, W 113.800. At this point, we were 1066 miles "as the crow flies" from home. Thanks to the Canadians, this is a far north as we will get. Blame Canada!

We lost a lot of time backtracking and decided to camp out by the Hungry Horse Reservoir on the southwest side of the park. When we left the park we started out driving around it to the east side so that we could go to Great Falls. But it was pretty late by then, so we turned back and spent the night here. Instead today we will just head south and go through Helena. The talk around town is about the forest fire and it sounds like its spreading rapidly. So our pathway to Great Falls might be blocked anyway.